In 2020, countries across the globe were brought to their knees because of the novel coronavirus disease, first discovered in Wuhan, China, and later altered the way people work, disrupted academic activities and businesses as well as shaped the world’s healthcare.
While medical experts and scientists battle to produce curative drugs and vaccines to subdue the pandemic, another viral infection, monkeypox, which may be of public health concern, has started surfacing after the last outbreak in 2017.
Just like the way COVID-19 cases moved from zero to hundreds, claiming lives at the same time, the figures of persons infected with monkeypox is on the rise with scattered cases of the disease in some states across Nigeria.
In the last few days, Nigeria has confirmed 15 cases of monkeypox and registered 59 suspected cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
Read also: US confirms case of monkeypox in traveller from Nigeria
Monkeypox, a viral infection that belongs to the same family of smallpox and occurs primarily in tropical rainforest areas of Central and Western Africa, has manifestations such as fever, rash on the face and body, intense headache, swollen lymph nodes and back pain.
The viral disease is mostly transmitted from animal to human. It can also be transferred from human to human when a person makes close contact with skin lesions, body fluids of an infected person or objects they have contaminated such as bedclothes, says Nigeria’s disease control agency.
Although there is no specific treatment for the disease, a vaccinia-based vaccine was approved for the prevention of smallpox and monkeypox in 2019 and is also not yet widely available in the public sector, according to the World Health Organisation.
Speaking with BusinessDay in Benin City on the Edo State government’s preparedness to contain the disease, Uwa Okhuarobo, the state epidemiologist, said they had put the surveillance system on red alert to ensure monkeypox, just like every other priority disease, was curtailed.
According to Okhuarobo, “We have put in position our response materials; Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) is on watch mode migrating towards alert mode because we are already having cases in neighbouring states.
“This was how COVID-19 started; people were carefree and it became a pandemic. Our health authorities should manage it carefully to avoid another outbreak.”
Allaying fears, the NCDC recently said it would respond to the incidence of monkeypox the way it responded to other epidemic-prone diseases in the country.
Chikwe Ihekweazu, director-general of the agency, who spoke with newsmen in Abuja last Tuesday, said an outbreak would be declared if there was a large cluster of monkeypox cases that constitute an emergency.
